The Gift: What's a Mantle?

 I ended my last post with the list of mantles from my draft document. (Thank you blogger for making that image the thumbnail for that post. 🙄) You may have noticed some of the names are a bit overwrought, like they could be infinity stones or something. The language felt appropriate for a supers game. 

In the setting, the term mantle, and many of their names, come from a super with psychic powers. He was one of the first to write about how the gift works, and his grandiose terminology stuck.

So what's a mantle? It's a themed collection of powers that gives you a ready-to-play super hero in one step. Think of it as a template. Each one comes with lots of suggestions on how to customize it to fit your concept.

I intend to make a section on making your own mantle, and character creation is essentially point-based. But it is very useful to me as a designer to have a list of character types that the game needs to support. Creating the mantles without a power list was actually easier.

Let's take a look at one! Here is the Mantle of Strength.

 

Mantle of Strength

AKA: Brick, Powerhouse

You are fantastically strong, capable of lifting fifty tons or more. Your body is resilient as well, able to shrug off blows that would be fatal to a normal person. 

Name Ideas: Power, Strong, Invulnerable, Titan, Mighty, Steel, Stone, Colossal, Dreadnought. 

Typical Power Aspects: Body of steel, Stronger than a locomotive, Towering Size, Rhino man, Unbreakable skin, Bear totem

Typical Complications: Massive weight, Awkward size, Frightful appearance, 

Character Points: 14

Powers:

Super Strength

Act on a super-human scale for any test of strength or endurance. This includes attacks with your mighty fists or melee weapons. 

Nigh Invulnerable

You are very hard to hurt. Defend on a super-human scale against any attempt to cause you physical harm.

Extra Effort:

Extra Strong: Spend an energy point to improve any overcome or create advantage roll using your super strength. 

Hit Harder: Spend an energy point to increase the damage of any physical attack you make. 

Shrug It Off: Spend an energy point to reduce the damage of any physical attack against you. This can reduce an attack to zero stress.

Customization:

High Density

A character with a body made of metal or stone is a comics mainstay. Take the Anchored stunt to represent your mass. Maybe take an Element Resistance stunt if its appropriate to your form. Can you change your density on the fly? That is a Power Up stunt. Want to take it to extremes? Take the Temporary Invulnerability power to represent becoming an indestructible statue.

Size Changing

Does your strength come from your size? Inconvenient size is just a power fact. If you want to be more flexible with your size changing, take a Power Up stunt.

Flying Brick

This mantle isn’t always defined by heaviness. Many super-strong characters can make mighty leaps with their powerful legs. Quite a few can fly.

Invulnerability

Most heroes with this mantle focus on the active use of strength. If you want to focus on the passive or defensive side of your powers, take some stunts to play up that angle. Elemental Resistance makes you extra tough against a specific type of attack. Bodyguard to take hits for your allies. Grit to double up on the In Peril condition. Take Regeneration to bounce back from injury.

The Other Type of Invulnerability

You can decide what form your toughness takes. Most often it means armor-like skin, but it can also take the form of rapid regeneration. In this case, physical stress means wounds serious enough tax your rapid healing, and the In Peril or Doomed conditions indicate severed limbs or other gruesome dismemberment.

Fun things to do with Super Strength:

• Throw a car at somebody. 
• Uproot a lamppost and swing it like a club. 
• Punch the ground to create a tremor. 
• Stomp your foot to tear up the ground. 
• Bend a metal beam around a super villain to restrain him. 
• Punch a hole in a brick wall. 
• Plant yourself in front of your allies as a human shield. 
• Hold up a collapsing ceiling while civilians escape.